Bonus: Case Update

It's been fifteen years and her killer has never been found. A lot has happened since season one. Rebecca's father, Larry, is continuing to battle to get justice for his daughter. He's been fighting to change the law to allow more open access to cold case files. The ASP have been made making this claim since the beginning that keeping the

case file sealed is an absolute priority. After we began our investigation and went to the police and the prosecutor to point out discrepancies in the timeline, Dennis, the lead investigator on Rebecca's case, interviewed Casey's friends Philip and Laren, who were out with Casey on September twentieth, two thousand and four, the day Rebecca was murdered. Rather than talking to them in person, Dennis sent their witness statements back

to them. In doing so, he lost any ability he had to ask them anything new or to challenge them on anything they'd already written down. But this also meant that these witness statements, which the Arkansas State Police have long claimed were sealed in order to protect the integrity of the case, immediately became public knowledge. Rebecca was murdered

on September twentieth, two thousand and four. We know she dropped Casey off at Sonic that morning in her car, stopped by the Possum Trot to buy a breakfast sandwich and coffee, and went back to Casey's house. So now we can focus even more on the timeline and try to answer the question what happened during those missing hours. In Philip's statement, he said, some of the guys were headed to Batesville to watch a movie. When I arrived, Casey was outside and I started to talk to him.

Casey told me that he was waiting on his ride. I think he mentioned Rebecca as being his ride, but I'm not positive. I asked where his truck was, and he told me that his dad had taken it to Batesville. According to phillips statement, the five friends Laren, b Jy, Sean, Casey, and Philip left Sonic sometime between four thirty five and four fifty. Philip wrote, we did some running about town.

As with Laren's statement, which we covered last season, there's no mention of many key details, like how many vehicles they took or who rode with whom. Philip's statement did give a few more key details. He said that the first thing the guys did when they got to Batesville was stopped by to pick up Casey's truck. He wrote, we found it in a second parking area, and Casey made sure the keys were in it. I noticed that there's no mention of which parking area or of what

time any of this happened. Also, Philip wrote in his statement that Casey indicated that his father had left the truck for him. There's also no mention of what time Casey's father, who was a truck driver, went on the road. Figuring out these details is crucial to narrowing down the people who could have come to Casey's home that day and killed Rebecca After picking up the truck, the five

friends stopped by Hastings then Colton's to eat. Then they went to the seven to fifteen showing of Resident Evil. After the movie, Philip gave a couple more details. He said that the guys stopped by Walmart and then go before traveling back to Melbourne, where they let Larin get his truck before arriving at Laren's house. At that point, they watched some DVDs and smoke some pot. Two of the guys left and Philip and Laren went to bed in their rooms. Casey stayed the night and slept on

the couch. At seven am the next morning, according to Philip, Casey's alarm went off. Casey hit snooze twice before leaving at seven twenty. I'm noticing that in this part of the witness statement, the details are getting more and more specific, Philip wrote. Casey quickly sat up, put his clothes on, said goodbye, and left. That was the last time I've heard or saw Casey. Philip also wrote, I know Casey was madly in love with Rebecca because he would never

shut up about her. He lost a promotion because of their antics at work, but he didn't care, Philip said in his statement as Larry and did that Casey tried to call Rebecca Monday night when he got home from Batesville. Philip wrote, after he had been on the phone, he told us that she was missing. But there's something weird here.

When I squint to read the handwritten statement, I can see that the sentence originally read he told us all that she had been missing for twenty four hours had been and twenty four hours are crossed out and initialed by Philip. So I'm wondering why was this crossed out. I keep coming back again and again to the statement that we got from our informant. They said that the police had the timeline wrong. The police were focused on the evening and never addressed the multiple gaps of missing

time during the day. Philip wrote that Casey showed signs he was worried about Rebecca being missing, but he never left to go find her. This echoes what was rech and Laren's statement. Laren wrote, Rebecca was supposed to have picked him up, but she hadn't shown. It entered my mind that he wasn't too concerned, but I just thought that he was getting out with the guys for the night. I'm thinking if Casey was telling his friends that Rebecca

was supposed to pick him up that afternoon. This does not match the original story that was told to police and the one that's been reported in the newspapers. By the time Casey got off work, Rebecca was already supposed to have left to pick her sister Danielle up and go back to school. I had already seen Laren's statement, so I compare the one in public record now with the one I saw last summer, and I noticed something else.

Certain passages have been highlighted with neon yellow ink, including the part where Laryen wrote, I know that Casey was head over heels for her, and for him to go out with us and have something not right with Rebecca didn't seem right. Laren also wrote in his statement that Casey used the phone when he got back to Laren's house. I can see there's another part of Laren's statement with big bold yellow blocks. Laren wrote after he hung up,

he stated that Rebecca was missing. That's when it really seemed odd that he didn't head out the door to find her. As I said at the end of season one, we're all in this together. But even though we now have access to these statements, the waiting game continues. Rebecca's father, Larry, has worked tirelessly over the years to get justice for his daughter. He's written hundreds of letters to police and to prosecutors, spoken to the media, and spent tens of

thousands of dollars hiring investigators. Since last season, Larry has spoken to a legislator and began to work on creating Rebecca's Law, which would allow for more open access of records. Some states have sunset clauses which allow case files to become or public after a certain amount of time passes. Unfortunately, Arkansas isn't one of them. Well, we think that it should be. In February twenty nineteen, we were invited to the Capitol Building in Little Rock to meet with Janadela Rosa,

a member of Arkansas Congress. She's also a true crime fan. So I listened to the podcast because I listened to a lot of true podcasts. Because I travel back and forth from northwest Arkansas, so I have a three hour drive each way, three hours and fifteen minutes. If the state police are listening, and my sister's the one that got me hooked on podcasts, and she's actually the one

that recommended Helen Gone. I hadn't heard about it. I got to the episode where you were saying that I think it was that Larry had contacted the legislature trying to get Rebecca's law passed, and I'm in my car and everybody would laugh. I mean, but I'm not a car, went, Holy moly, that's me. That's me. That's me. That that pertains to me. Jana reached out to us on our Facebook page and we've been corresponding about the best way

to get Rebecca's law passed. There's a big difference between one single case and a law that would apply to

all cases. Henceforth, it's two totally different things. So you always have to take that into account, and you've got to bring in basically all the stakeholders in all of it and try and come up with something that benefits the victim's family but doesn't harm the investigation, that doesn't cause a prosecutor to have trouble later, that doesn't in any way infringe on any kind of privacy laws or

anything like that. So it's a much bigger task to try and create a policy or a law than it is to try and fix an issue that one particular person had in one particular case. Because it applies to the whole state. That means that in order to pass something like Rebecca's Law, we will need to have the support of the Arkansas State Police. But it's going to

be a long process. We meet every other year in session, so right now we're in session, and we meet in the off years, and that's when the bills are proposed. And a bill has to be proposed either by a House member or a Senate member. It's the only one that can introduce a bill, and it's got to move through both chambers. So in this case, if I introduce this as a House bill, it'll go through committee first. If it passes that, then it goes to the House

floor and gets voted on by the whole house. If it passes that, it goes and does the exact same thing. On the Senate side, It goes through its chamber, goes through its floor. If it passes all of that, then it goes to the Governor's desk and he has the power to veto or pass, and if it passes that, then you actually have a law that's in place. So there's five check marks that have to be made, two on the House side, two on the Senate side, and one by the governor. So if you can get through

all of that, then you actually have a law. As an investigator, I completely understand the difficulties the Arkansas State Police would have with a bill like this. What I would like to see from this bill is twofold one some sort of a review process where an independent investigator, after a certain amount of time has passed, can come in and take another look at the case file. And two, at some point I believe the case file should become public.

Of course, there's a need to withhold certain details early in investigation so the killer can be caught. But once a case has gone cold, the public can be your best friend when you're trying to solve a murder. We'll be right back. One thread that seems to tie Jane and Rebecca's case together, and as an investigator I have to be very careful to avoid, is the concept of confirmation bias. I see it all the time in murder cases.

Once investigators or loved ones decide who or what killed someone, the person is looking for the evidence to support their particular conclusion. It's hard to do, but you really need to have an open mind when entering an investigation, and that's why what we do is so important. In Rebecca's case, Dennis Simons, the lead investigator, told me he believed that Chris killed her, and that if Chris could not be prosecuted for Rebecca's murder, Dennis planned to ensure that Chris

served life in prison on the installment plan. Chris was arrested in October twenty eighteen for threatening the life of Justin, Rebecca's ex boyfriend, allegedly telling him that if Justin continued to talk to police about Rebecca's murder, Chris would kill him. I was shocked to hear this because, as many of you know, we interviewed both Chris and Justin in season one and concluded that we do not believe there's any evidence to support the fact that either of them were

involved in Rebecca's murder. I decided we had to get to the bottom of Chris's arrest. Was it really connected to Rebecca's case or was something else going on. Here's what we know. According to the arrest affidavit, Chris was at a friend's house on September twenty twenty fifth, twenty eighteen, when the friend told him he was headed to Justin's house. The affidavit described Justin as the former boyfriend of Rebecca Gould,

the two thousand and four homicide victim. Once they got to the house, Justin's wife told investigators when she answered the back door, Chris's friend entered, and then Chris pushed his way into the residence and put the couple's telephone in his pocket. Justin was at the store at the time, but when he got back home, he reported that he was confronted by Chris quote in regards to Justin making statements to law enforcement about Chris's possible involvement in the

murder of Rebecca. According to court papers, Chris threatened to kill Justin if he continued to talk. Justin's wife said she heard Chris say he would cut Justin's throat and that he would kill him if he continued to make statements. Chris's friend also told investigators that he witnessed Chris threatened Justin's life. Police say Justin escaped the residence and contacted

law enforcement from a neighbor's phone. According to press reports, Chris was charged with residential burglary, intimidating a juror a witness or informant, terroristic threatening in the first degree, in interference with emergency communication in the first degree for taking the phone. He was taken into custody and his bail was set at fifty thousand dollars. In March twenty nineteen, Chris was sentenced to ninety six months in jail for

terroristic threatening. So, due in part to his criminal history, Chris got eight years in prison for making a threat. I wanted to know more about what happened that night, so I filed a freedom of information requests with a Stone County Sheriff's office. It was denied by the Council for Stone County. In the denial, the lawyer referred to the case being part of an open investigation connected to Rebecca's case. I was able to get the arrest affidavit.

The person who supplied the facts constituting reasonable cause was you guessed it, Special Agent Dennis Simon's of the Arkansas State Police. There's a lot about this arrest affidavit that bothers me. First of all, Justin was supposedly in fear for his life, but this affidavit wasn't filed until October eighth, two weeks after the fight. I'm getting a lot of other bizarre Facebook messages from people who claimed that there's

more to the story. One is from a source who states that the fight started out as a domestic dispute between Justin and his wife and that Chris somehow got in the middle. I'm left with a lot of questions. If Chris threatened Justin's life, why wasn't he arrested that night? But with Chris behind bars, it seems that no one is asking questions about what happened. But I won't accept silence for an answer. I'm Catherine Townsend and this is Helen Gone. Helen Gone is a joint production between School

of Humans and iHeartRadio. It is written and recorded by me. Katherine Townsend. Taylor Church and Gabby Watts are our producers and story editors. Executive producers are Brandon Barr, Brian Lavin, and Else Crowley for School of Humans and Conell Byrne and Chuck Bryant for iHeart. Theme and original score are by Ben Sale. Available wherever you get your music, Please visit us at Helen gonpodcast dot com or follow us on social media. School of Humans